THE FOLLOWING WAS WRITTEN IN 2019 AT THE START OF THE MYTHIC MISSISSIPPI PROJECT. WE UNDERSTAND (IN 2024) THAT IMPROVEMENTS ARE BEING MADE AT THE SITE. THIS PAGE WILL BE UPDATED AT THE BOTTOM WHEN THOSE IMPROVEMENTS ARE DONE. WE WILL RETAIN THE ORIGINAL PORTION OF THIS WEB PAGE AS A HISTORICAL DOCUMENT.

The State of Illinois has one of the U.S.’s thirteen cultural UNESCO World Heritage sites! That site is Ancient Cahokia, located in Collinsville. Notwithstanding its archaeological fame as the capital of a great civilization, this site is underexploited as a tourism resource for regional development as seen in the signs at the turn-off into the site and at the site itself: they do not indicate Cahokia’s World Heritage status. The State of Illinois, downstate Illinois media and the Illinois Office of Tourism, pay inadequate attention to Cahokia Mounds. It is nearby Saint Louis, in Missouri, that appears to capture the larger share of tourism to this Illinois site. Much could be done to promote Cahokia Mounds regionally, nationally and internationally as World Heritage to the benefit of metro-east Illinois and Collinsville in whose backyard the site, literally, is located.

Cahokia Mounds was inscribed on the World Heritage List on the basis of two criteria of Outstanding Universal Value: “it bears a unique [and] exceptional testimony to  … a civilization which … has disappeared” (iii) and it is “an outstanding example of a type of building, architectur[e] [and] landscape which illustrates [a] significant stage in human history” (iv). As it does for most of the archaeological sites on the World Heritage List, UNESCO has sponsored a brief video introduction: CLICK  

Notice  the World Heritage designation plaque in upper right. It would be a stretch to say that the UNESCO plaque has “pride of place.” Although it is large it is featured in the interpretive center as one of many hallmarks of the site.

Indeed, Cahokia Mounds was inscribed before some of the world’s greatest archaeological sites – such as Stonehenge, Petra and Machu Picchu – were designated. Although Cahokia Mounds lacks the visual splendor of those other places, the site’s significance (what UNESCO calls “Outstanding Universal Value”) is unquestionable.

Cahokia Mounds was the largest settlement in prehispanic America north of the Basin of Mexico. It covered 3,200 acres. There were residential neighborhoods, plazas, temples, astronomical observatories and the great Monks Mound.

Cahokia was a bustling city that erupted onto the Middle Mississippi Valley landscape ca. 1050 AD  through dramatic social and political events. Cahokia Mounds was a planned site that significantly altered the native cultural patterns that preceded it. Not only did it attract tens of thousands of people to dwell there, it also was a pilgrimage center with a religion that archaeologists are reconstructing — a religion that spread out from Cahokia across the Midwest, down the Mississippi River and west. Within this large geographical area there was exuberant trade in many different kinds of goods. Cahokia’s rapid expansion has been called “a great civilizing social movement” by Timothy Pauketat, a major Cahokia scholar and recently retired director of the Illinois Archaeological Survey. But this “big bang” did not last. Only one hundred years later the waning of Cahokia began.

When Cahokia and the Mississipian world collapsed ca. 1200 AD, the great earthen mounds remained on the landscape. Thus, when early Anglo settlers began moving into the lands of the descendant native peoples, they promulgated a “myth of the moundbuilders”, arguing that the “simple” tribes they saw could not possibly have built the mound-marked landscape. Eventually, that fiction was overturned by indisputable evidence that the (then) contemporary Indians were related to the ancient peoples.

The remarkable archaeological survey that Ephraim George Squier and Edwin Hamilton Davis conducted and published (with 48 maps and 207 engravings) in their Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley (Smithsonian Institution, 1848 — this was the first publication of the Smithsonian!) gives us an idea of what the Europeans saw on the landscape, before they erased so much of the Indigenous past from the surface. Although Ohio’s earthworks dominate the volume, Cahokia is mentioned with the indication of other smaller mounds nearby and across the river at St Louis. The book can be read online through the Gutenberg Project: CLICK  

Today, most of Cahokia’s mounds are gone – although Monks Mound still towers. The “wow” of the other great archaeological sites around the world is visually missing, notwithstanding what archaeologists have determined was there. Thus, the interpretive center at Cahokia Mounds plays an especially important role. The interpretive center (museum) is quite good with compelling dioramas, artifact exhibitions, maquettes, maps and other illustrations that help the visitor appreciate the significance of the site.

 

Watch this interview with Site Superintendent Lori Belknap to understand the challenges and accomplishments involved in managing this great site. 

Long-time site archaeologist, William Iseminger, offers his insight into the archaeological history of Cahokia in this first interview. (SEE below for his second presentation) And read his article about five decades of public interpretation at Cahokia.

One of the most interesting museological aspects of the interpretive center is its representation of the work of archaeologists and the museum’s representation of the professional philosophy of archaeologists alongside the cosmology of native peoples, leading to two very different interpretations of Cahokia.

Also interesting is how the museum negotiates the NAGPRA prohibition about the display of Native American human remains. The maquette of Cahokia’s most famous burial (from Mound 72) appears to finesse the issue.

A major initiative is underway to expand the significance of Cahokia Mounds by having it become a unit of the U.S. National Park Service. This effort is being led by Heartlands Conservancy (see below) in coordination with Illinois political leaders such as Governor JB Pritzker, Senator Dick Durbin, Senator Tammy Duckworth, Congressman Mike Bost, among others, community advocacy associations and Native American tribal  groups. If approved, the site would be managed as a partnership between the NPS and the local groups that have enthusiastically pushed for this designation. An important issue to be followed in the future is not the obvious improved protection of the site, with expanded boundaries, but also the economic and social development that NPS-inspired tourism could and should bring to Collinsville (where it is located) and the entire adjacent Illinois Metro-East area. Or will Saint Louis remain the primary beneficiary? Listen to two segments of the US/ICOMOS webinar (May 26, 2022) that discussed some of these issues:
: (1) presented by Bill Iseminger: CLICK HERE

and (2) Heartlands Conservancy presentation: CLICK (see below)

Also watch this interview with political scientist, Dr. Robert Pahre, about National Parks and the Cahokia site: CLICK      

Other important Mississippian civilization sites in Illinois have been excavated by archaeologists over the years. Although there is little to see on the surface, it would be exciting to visit Emerald Mound, near Lebanon, if there were a state-of-the-art interpretive center. Emerald Mound is one of the most interesting Mississippian sites: CLICK

Among the tragedies that befell the Indian peoples of Illinois was their final expulsion in 1830 under President Andrew Jackson. This was the culminating blow in a process of forced attrition that had been happening for many decades. The government’s Indian Removal Act lumped all tribes east of the Mississippi together and sent them across the river, mostly to Oklahoma. Various contemporary Native American tribes that were expelled are intensely interested in Cahokia Mounds, drawing a historical connection between themselves and the Mississippian people who built the massive site. The Chickasaw, Peoria and Osage trace their ancestry to the Mississippian people who created Cahokia and its extraordinary native world. Read these articles: (1) CLICK and (2) CLICK 

In 2015 the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra performed an original piece by composer Brian Baxter entitled “Cahokia”, which chronicles the rise and fall of the ancient prehistoric metropolis in southern Illinois: CLICK 

At the top of this page we posed the question:  “what purpose today does a World Heritage Site serve?” In Collinsville it appears to serve none. Rather, Collinsville hosts a vibrant Italian Fest (September, since 1984), which is a legacy of the many Italians who immigrated to this region as miners. And it hosts a popular International Horseradish Festival (June, since 1988). Collinsville also used to host The World’s Largest Catsup Bottle Festival, which ended in 2018 after nineteen years. Certainly, these festivals should continue. Missing in Collinsville is a World Heritage Festival, perhaps to be held on April 18: International World Heritage Day.

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UPDATE ABOUT CAHOKIA MOUNDS FOLLOWING THE RENOVATION
pending

KEY REFERENCES
Cahokia Mounds Museum Society. Cahokia. City of the Sun. (1992) – popular
Emerson, Thomas E. Cahokia and the Archaeology of Power. (University of Alabama Press, 1997) – academic
Pauketat, Timothy R. and Thomas E. Emerson. Cahokia. Domination and Ideology in the Mississippian World.  (University of Nebraska Press, 1997) – academic
Chappell, Sally A. Kitt. Cahokia. Mirror of the Cosmos. (University of Chicago Press, 2002) – popular
Pauketat, Timothy R. Ancient Cahokia and the Mississippians. (Cambridge University Press, 2004) – academic